


stalemate

by laconicGhost



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Future Fic, Gift Fic, M/M, Personal Injury, iwaizumi can always pull oikawa out of a bad place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 11:53:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6115619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laconicGhost/pseuds/laconicGhost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before he can even try the handle, Oikawa’s voice snaps a hard, “Go away” and Iwaizumi pulls his eyebrows together, frowning. Tooru’s voice was frustrated, angry, and even a little bit scared, which was a dangerous mix, and it instantly plants a seed of worry in Iwaizumi’s gut. Ignoring his best friend’s harsh words, he tries the door anyway, only to find it locked. His frown deepens.</p>
<p>“Unlock the door, Oikawa.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	stalemate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [macabremoonlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabremoonlight/gifts).



> this is a birthday fic for my friend amber!! she originally gave me a prompt to fill but i kinda missed it and wrote this whole thing instead, but she /did/ want iwaoi angst so at least there's that lmao
> 
> any mistakes are my own, and i'll fix them as i see them!!
> 
> happy birthday, i hope you enjoy!!

Iwaizumi was knocking on Oikawa’s bedroom door, waiting to hear anything beyond the room even though he knew he wouldn’t hear a sound. He had gotten over as soon as he could: Tooru’s mother letting him in and nodding before pointing upstairs, not saying a word. She knew what Iwaizumi was here for, and she wasn’t going to waste her breath on asking him why. 

It wasn’t often that she had to request for Hajime’s help in coaxing her son out of his shell. Hell, Iwaizumi can’t count the amount of times he’s ended up being in this position since he learned how to walk: standing in front of Oikawa’s bedroom when no one else could have brought him out. One thing that hadn’t changed through the many years he’s known his friend was the simple truth that Oikawa was stubborn. He didn’t like leaning on other people when he felt like he was at his weakest, even if the people around him were reaching out to help, and shut everyone out. His mind had dark corners that Oikawa liked to hide in, and each time he decided to disappear in one the repercussions on his emotional state were disastrous.

Iwaizumi hated it almost as much as Tooru’s mother did, so here he was.

He waits a few moments behind the door, waiting for some kind of signal that told him that Tooru knew he was there before reaching for the handle to slide it open. When he speaks, he makes sure his voice doesn’t betray his worry. If Oikawa knew why he was here, there would most certainly be a struggle for Hajime to deal with. “Oi, Oikawa. I’m coming in.”

Before he can even try the handle, Oikawa’s voice snaps a hard, “Go away” and Iwaizumi pulls his eyebrows together, frowning. Tooru’s voice was frustrated, angry, and even a little bit scared, which was a dangerous mix, and it instantly plants a seed of worry in Iwaizumi’s gut. Ignoring his best friend’s harsh words, he tries the door anyway, only to find it locked. His frown deepens.

“Unlock the door, Oikawa.”

“I  _ told  _ you to go away.” Even though his voice is muffled, Oikawa’s voice is incredibly tight. “Leave me alone. Why are you even here?”

“You know why,” is all Iwaizumi replies, his voice soft. He stares at the floor. “Please open the door, Oikawa.”

“I said no.”

Sighing, Iwaizumi shuts his eyes before sitting on the ground, pressing his back to the door and stretching his legs out, reopening to gaze to stare up at the ceiling in the hallway. He can play this game with Oikawa for as long as he needs to, and knowing Oikawa, he’ll be here for a while. He sighs. “Fine. Be that way, but I’m not leaving until we talk.”

Oikawa’s hoarse voice grows quiet. “There’s nothing to talk about. Go home.” Hajime can hear Oikawa shifting in his room: a clack of a glass as it’s placed back on the tabletop, the rustle of bedsheets and then the soft clicks of metal. Tooru’s crutches, he realizes with a sickening feeling. He listens as Tooru pads across the floor, balancing on his crutches without any trouble, his voice becoming clearer now as he gets closer to his door. It quickly becomes apparent that his tone is thick with grief. “Just… please go home, Iwa-chan.”

“I missed you.” Iwaizumi doesn’t move his gaze from the ceiling. University, volleyball, and finals have kept him busy, and this is the first chance that he’s gotten to take the time to visit his family at home. Of course, he came to visit Oikawa as soon as he found out he had been home as well, despite the lack of texts and phonecalls that Oikawa had stopped weeks ago. He decides not to bring it up, for it would bring a whole new argument into the mix that Iwaizumi doesn’t have the patience for. “It’s been a while.”

“We’ll it’s gonna be a while more, because I’m not unlocking this door. I don’t want to see you.” The words are fake, Oikawa’s words trembling, and Iwaizumi hears what he really means:  _ I don’t want to see you like this.  _ Hajime breathes out his nose quietly, letting his eyes slide close as he focuses on Tooru’s presence on the other side of the sliding door and it alone while his voice continues to filter through. “You wasted your time. I’m not talking.”

It’s now that Iwaizumi thinks to himself for a few moments. He doesn’t know what he hates more when Oikawa gets like this: his stubbornness that seems as endless as his stupidity or that every word that comes out of his mouth twists into an ugly pointed tip, feeling like shards of glass burrowing into his skin. Either way, he can feel his irritation growing every second that the door stays latched shut: at Tooru for his bullheadedness and at himself for letting Oikawa simmer in his own doubts for this long. Knowing that losing his temper will only make things worse, Hajime takes a few moments to get it under control. “Whether or not I wasted my time is up to me,” he finally sighs. folding his hands in his lap. “I just want to talk to you. I can do it without you opening the door.”

Oikawa is silent, and Iwaizumi can hear him shuffle before he’s sitting down, grunting in discomfort when he strains something until he’s sitting, back to the door, same as Hajime. They both sit in silence, pressed against either sides of the sliding door and searching for words until Oikawa, voice barely above a whisper, asks, “What do you want?”

There’s a few seconds where Iwaizumi debates being straightforward, afraid of how Oikawa will react to his question, but eventually just sighs. “Your knee. You had to go in and get an Arthroscopy, right?” There’s quiet, and then finally, a near-silent yes, which isn’t good. Iwaizumi licks his lips, bracing himself for the worst, and presses forward. “How bad is it?” The silence continues, dragging on and on as Oikawa doesn’t answer for a long time. So long in fact, that Iwaizumi thinks that he’s being ignored so he frowns, pulling away from the door to look behind at it, almost like he’s looking at Tooru through it. There’s not a single sound that answers his question, so he tries again. “Oikawa, how bad is it?”

“Do you love me, Iwa-chan?”

Iwaizumi scowls at the question, seeing as it doesn’t answer his own, but decides to play along. If Oikawa’s doubts needed to be re-enforced with the truth, Hajime would be there to take that job, no matter how many times he needed to do it. He did it in Junior High, he did it at Aoba Jousai, and he’d do it now -- always waiting by Oikawa’s side to be there for him when he needed it. “Absolutely,” he says. “What kind of question is that?” Oikawa sniffs, his tone wobbling and on the edge of breaking.

“Even if… I couldn’t play volleyball anymore?”

Time seems to freeze and Iwaizumi sucks in a startled breath. Oikawa… couldn’t play volleyball anymore? His mind seems to slow, the new information jamming his thought process and spamming his brain with an endless echo of Tooru’s voice just repeating “no volleyball” over and over like he couldn’t believe it. He  _ can’t  _ believe it. Hajime lets out a long breath, fighting through the stinging realization that Oikawa was effectively doomed to lose his dreams to a personal injury so he can answer his best friend without making the pause too long. No, of  _ course  _ this didn’t change anything. “What are you talking about? I love  _ every  _ part of you. The you that plays volleyball and the you that doesn’t -- they’re both the same.”

“But--”

“Stop it. Do you honestly think I would stop loving you because you can’t play anymore?” A feeling in his stomach, crude and heavy like oil, reminds him that was the way Oikawa’s insecurities played out, and he swallows thickly. “Please, Tooru, open the door.”

There’s silence, but then sure enough, there’s a small click and the door slides open, revealing Oikawa in a heap on the floor, face a splotchy red mess of tears with his crutches thrown haphazardly beside him. Red-rimmed brown eyes look up, puffy from crying, his bottom lip wobbles before it parts into a broken and desperate  _ “Iwa-chan” -- _ and Hajime is already moving, pulling Oikawa into his chest as the brunet bursts into a fresh bout of tears. He hushes him gently, carding his fingers through brown curls as he lets Tooru stain his shirt with tears, weeping into his chest and holding him so tightly as he mourns everything he’s lost.

They stay like that for a while, just holding on to each other as Tooru cries and Hajime holds himself together for the both of them. The time passes so quickly that Iwaizumi hears Tooru’s mother leave the house without a word to either of them, leaving them by themselves in the large house. He doesn’t blame her. Until Oikawa is done with most of his crying, Hajime just strokes his hair and thinks of all the things he could say, but won’t. However, he finally asks the question that had been on his mind when Oikawa finally settles down.

“Why didn’t you call me?” he murmurs, while Tooru’s still trying to still his heaving chest. “I should have been there with you.”

“No,” Tooru whimpers, shaking his head. “You -- you had finals to worry about. I didn’t want to bother you with this.”

The words burn, digging under Iwaizumi’s skin, and he bites his tongue to keep himself from spitting out a nasty reply. “I always worry about you, idiot,” he snaps instead. He presses a furious kiss on the top of Oikawa’s head. “You should have told me. Dropping off the face of the Earth and avoiding me for a month was worse than finding out about this.” Oikawa shifts uncomfortably at the remark, the air around him growing tense as he fails to respond. Hajime sighs, but knows that the job of continuing the conversation is left to him. “What happened?”

Another beat of silence goes by before Oikawa wedges his face in the crook of Hajime’s neck, fingers clenching and unclenching into the back on his shirt. “We were in the middle of a practice match,” Oikawa rasps, his voice raw from crying, but he makes no move to clear his throat. “I went to receive a bad serve, but someone else came too and we collided.” Almost like Hajime can see it himself, his winces and Oikawa sniffles again. “I’m sorry I didn’t call, I was so scared and I knew you had finals and I didn’t know what to do--”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here now,” Iwaizumi says, burying his face in Tooru’s curls and sighing out deeply. “Just relax.” Oikawa hesitates before he nods and quiets down, gathering his sniffling under control so he’s breathing more evenly. His hands uncurl from where they were fisted in Iwaizumi’s shirt and trail up his spine, gently skimming long, slender fingers across the soft hairs at the nape of Hajime’s neck as he calms down. The two of them fall into an easy silence that lasts a few minutes before Oikawa grunts.

“I’m uncomfortable.”

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes at the predictable response. “We  _ are  _ sitting on the floor. Here -- up we go.” Without moving Oikawa away, he reaches out and stretches an arm underneath the caramel brunet’s knees, being mindful of the ace-bandage wrapped right, scooping him up off the ground as he gets to his feet. Tooru yelps, gripping tightly around Hajime’s neck when he’s pulled up so suddenly and without warning, being transported over to his bed.

“Tell me before you do that next time, I almost let go!” he complains, but Iwaizumi knows he doesn’t really mean it from the red on the back of his neck.

“Give it up, you like being spoiled,” he says, smirking when Oikawa scoffs but doesn’t argue, letting himself be lowered down onto the mattress and pulling away from Iwaizumi when the dark brunet goes to retrieve his crutches to set next to the bed.

“Such a brute, Iwa-chan,” he says quietly, the usual tone of teasing not in his words at all. Iwaizumi thinks it sounds cute, his voice still kind of raspy, and he sends an amused look towards Tooru as he reaches down to pick up one of the crutches. Once he has both of them, he returns to Oikawa’s side and waits until Tooru scooches over a little bit so he can take a seat next to him on the bed. Oikawa leans over to nuzzle into his shoulder. “My darling brutish Iwa-chan.”

“Your voice is annoying,” Hajime murmurs, leaning in to press a kiss against Tooru’s mouth to get him to stop talking. “Don’t think I won’t hit you.” He feels Tooru’s lips curl up into a smile, and when they break apart he laughs.

“Wow, even  _ I  _ didn’t think you’d hit an injured patient, Iwa-chan,” he says sweetly, poking out his bottom lip in a pout as he wraps his arms around Hajime’s neck. “So mean.”

“Just for you,” Iwaizumi mumbles against the corner of Oikawa’s mouth, hands trailing along his waist and down his thigh. “Only for you.”

Tooru stiffens momentarily, taken aback by the comment and its genuinity, but instantly pulls his mouth back overtop of Iwaizumi to capture him in a kiss, mouths pressing together feverishly and pulling him even closer. Oikawa tastes like peppermint tea and Hajime can feel Tooru’s hands slide down his arms and around his back, trying to pull him closer even though he feels like the two of them are pressed together so tightly there’s no space between them. He pulls away from licking into Tooru’s mouth to suck at his neck, trailing kisses across his jaw before finding the spot that Oikawa liked kissed best, feeling a surge of lightheadedness when Tooru sighs a blissful,  _ “Hajime” _ and he bites down. 

Tooru gasps, arching his back into the ministration when suddenly he jerks back, hissing in pain and hand flying down to his knee. Hajime pulls away, eyes wide and apology ready on his tongue when Tooru shakes his head, face flushed.

“Ah -- sorry, I bent my knee wrong,” Tooru stammers, his pink face darkening to a deeper red as he rubs his knee gently. Hajime blanches when he realizes that the position they’re in would definitely be uncomfortable for him and swears, shifting to move off the bed when he feels a gentle touch at his wrist. “I didn’t say I wanted to stop.”

Hajime looks up and can’t help but burst into laughter when he sees how red Oikawa’s cheeks are. “I’ve made up my mind, you’re not doing anything with that knee the way it is,” he says simply, and almost as if he predicted it, Oikawa scowls.

“Iwa-chan--!” The caramel brunet whines, getting ready to sit up father in his seat, before Hajime reached up and puts a finger to his lips, effectively silencing him so he can speak himself, a sly smile at his lips.

“I didn’t say that  _ I  _ wasn’t going to do anything.”


End file.
